Library

“Coviolo Wireless” from Italy is one of the five winners of the European Broadband Awards 2017. This bottom-up project has been implemented by a group of citizens affiliated to the Neighbourhood Social Center of Coviolo, in collaboration with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia and Lepida Spa. A white spot area was covered with wireless broadband. Users have now access to high speed internet at an affordable cost. The capacity of the network can be expanded up to 1 Gbps without any structural intervention.

“Broadband Network Development in White Rural Areas” is one of the five winners of the European Broadband Awards 2017. This large scale EU funded project helped deploying broadband in rural areas of Greece. It provided connectivity to more than half a million people in white areas. The total cost of the project is EUR 199.7 million (of which EUR 143.8 million from EU Structural Funds).

In these videos, members of the Broadband Competence Offices (BCO) Network explain the role and impact of BCOs in their areas, and how they work with both public and private national, regional and local stakeholders to bring broadband to their communities. Their goal is to support their areas to achieve the Gigabit Society connectivity objectives, and to ensure that everyone is able to benefit from the opportunities of the Digital Single Market.

“Colchester Business Broadband” is one of the five winners of the European Broadband Awards 2017 competition. Colchester's open access passive fibre network delivers up-to-gigabit connectivity to more than 850 SMEs and 1.100 households in a previously underserved area of Colchester, UK. The project implemented a highly cost-effective deployment method, as it upgraded the existing CCTV infrastructure. It is estimated that this deployment model reduces the costs to 15%. The project costs of circa EUR 0.6 million were financed from regional and local public funds.

“Optic fibre to all houses on Gotland” is one of the five winners of the European Broadband Awards 2017 competition. The project brought fibre to the whole Gotland island in the Baltic Sea. The results show that at least 85% of residents and 50% of people owning a summer house have joined the project. The public administrations have spent EUR 4.3 million, of which EUR 2 million from the EU funds. The people of Gotland payed some EUR 12 million. To keep the costs low, people offered their land for cable rollout and even did the digging themselves. 57 thousand people now have fibre in Gotland.